New faculty, visitors for fall 2009

August 31, 2009Duke Law News

Aug. 31, 2009 — Duke Law School welcomes a number of new additions as the 2009-2010 academic year begins. The Law School’s academic ranks are bolstered by new permanent and visiting faculty with deep experience in a range of legal issues, from constitutional interpretation to forbidden markets.

Guy-Uriel Charles joins Duke Law as a professor of law and the founding director of the Duke Law Center on Law, Race and Politics. A scholar of and frequent public commentator on constitutional law, election law, campaign finance, redistricting, politics, and race, Charles visited at Duke Law last year and joined the faculty permanently in July. He previously was the Russell M. and Elizabeth M. Bennett Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, where he served as interim co-dean. Charles is teaching Civil Procedure, Race and the Law, and a Readings in Ethics course on the Ethics of Politics and Politicians.

Laurence R. Helfer comes to Duke Law as the Harry R. Chadwick, Sr. Professor of Law and as co-director, with Professor Curtis Bradley, of Duke Law School’s Center for International and Comparative Law. An expert in international law whose scholarly interests include interdisciplinary analysis of international law and institutions, human rights, and international intellectual property law and policy, Hefler also is serving on the faculty steering committee of the Duke Center on Human Rights. Prior to joining the Duke Law faculty in July, Helfer was a professor of law and director of the International Legal Studies Program at Vanderbilt University Law School. This fall, he will co-teach the Global Law Workshop with Professor Bradley and Professor Deborah DeMott; the workshop focuses on transnational regulation of stolen art and cultural property.

Kimberly D. Krawiec joins Duke Law as a professor of law; she specializes in corporate law and teaches courses on securities, corporate, and derivatives law. Her research interests span a variety of fields, including the empirical analysis of contract disputes; forbidden or taboo markets; corporate compliance systems; insider trading; derivatives hedging practices; and “rogue” trading. Krawiec was a visiting professor at Duke Law last year and previously was a professor of law at UNC-Chapel Hill. Prior to joining academia, Krawiec was a member of the Commodity & Derivatives Group at the New York office of Sullivan & Cromwell. She will teach a Readings in Ethics course on Ethics and the Financial Crisis, as well as courses on financial derivatives and taboo trades and foreign exchanges.

Joseph Blocher joins Duke Law as an assistant professor of law. Blocher is a scholar of constitutional law, the First and Second Amendments, capital punishment, property, federal courts, and law and development. A Durham native, Blocher graduated from Yale Law School and clerked for Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Rosemary Barkett of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He also practiced in the appellate group of O’Melveny & Myers, where he assisted the merits briefing for the District of Columbia in District of Columbia v. Heller. He is teaching Constitutional Law this fall.

A number of visitors also join the faculty for this semester, including Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito of the Supreme Court of the United States, who will teach a special short course on Current Issues in Constitutional Interpretation.